Chapter 3

When considering the “Big Idea” for a project, we should be looking at what “core concepts and processes, should students know” and “if your students understood…just two or three things, what would they be?” The last part was huge for me, what few main things are important that you want your students to take away from a project? That is what we need to think about when planning projects into our lessons. As teachers, there are many things we want our students to learn and sometimes it can be hard to focus on one specific thing. The “big idea” really helps teachers zero in on the heart of the material that will benefit students the most. Another thing to consider in finding the “Big Idea” is real-world contexts. I think this is extremely important not only because it will help students skills later on in life, but because when students can make real-world connections, they tend to remember it for longer.

            Three 21-st century skills were: Analyze, Evaluate, and Create. All of which are key in working with Project-Based Learning. This three things are exactly the focus of what students will be doing in a leaning environment focused around group work and projects.

            The book gave multiple definitions for literacy, but finally narrowed it down into down to one sentence that I think really works well, “learning to be independent, aware, and productive citizens”. I think this goes hand in hand with basic 21-st century skills, because if students can work on skills in literacy, they are also enhancing their ability to analyze, evaluate and create as well.

There are eight Essential Learning Fuctions, of which include: 1) Ubiquity: Learning Inside and Outside the Classroom, and All the Time, 2) Deep Learning, 3) Making Things Visible and Discussable, 4) Espressing Ourselves, Sharing Ideas, Building Community, 5) Collaboration-Teaching and Learning with Others, 6) Research, 7) Project Management: Planning and Organization, and 8) Reflection and Iteration. These are all clearly essential for students and preparing them for their life ahead. When students can learn inside and outside of the classroom as well, that is when they are learning at their fullest potential because there is no down time, they are taking in everything around them and learning from it. When students are deep learning, this is where technology can really come into play to help then with things like the web-based spreadsheets and online graphing. Another way technology really is a key tool is with making things visible. When students can create using digital tools, it can take their learning a step further. Building a community is something that I find is always really important, especially in young children, because they need to feel comfortable to be able to learn at their full potential, and having a sense of community in the classroom makes this possible. Community and collaboration really go hand-in-hand, working in groups and learning together helps make connections. A very real-word skill is planning and organization, and for students to learn this skill well is going to help them so much when they go to college, get a job and further on. Again technology is helping students when they go to reflect, if a student keeps a blog for an extended period of time, they can look back on how they have grown. This is key to assessing how a student has done and can also boost they students if they feel like they hadn’t learned anything, to see how far they have come.

          This chapter really easily works in with what we are doing this week because we are starting to think about our lesson plans and focus on those ideas. Its important for us to first look at the "Big Idea" while we are doing our planning and really focus our lessons on the key facts that we want our students learning from these projects.